In his 1982 book, With
The Beatles, The historic photographs of Dezo
Hoffmann, Dezo recounts the time in April 1963 when he
was sent up to Liverpool on assignment from The Record
Mirror to photograph The Beatles.
After doing some shots at Pauls house in Forthlin
Road, he says that Paul took them all to Sefton Park
in his Cortina Mark 1. It was here that the
famous "jump" shot was taken, "which
later became the 'Twist
& Shout' cover" 1. Also at this time, The
Beatles made their first film using Dezos' cine
camera. I remember this film being shown during a
special feature of "The Tube" on Channel 4.

When I first saw the book, I was
confused. I know Sefton Park very well. I grew
up there, and considered myself a bit of an expert on
the layout of the park. The trouble was, I didn't
recognise the location of this photograph, nor the one
of The Beatles with the Cortina. The block of
flats was definitely NOT round Sefton Park.
There was only one place in South Liverpool this could
have been taken. It had to be Allerton Golf
Course. The giveaway was the water tower on
Reservoir Road, just visible between John and Ringo.
I took off for the Golf Course to satisfy myself that
I was right, and sure enough the trees in the jump
picture were still there (a bit bigger perhaps, but
it's definitely them). The trees in the Cortina
picture are also still there, just yards from where
Dezo must have been lying on the ground to capture the
jump.

The block of flats in the jump picture has long been
demolished and was replaced with another block
slightly to the right of the original. There is
a lot more growth in the last 42 years and
unfortunately my comparison pictures are taken in
August so the water tower is obscured. In the
gap between the two trees in the Cortina picture,
there now stands a huge pylon, again this is partially
obscured by the vegetation in my picture.

You won't find this
spot on any guided tour of Beatle sites, because as
far as I know, nobody knows about it. And why
should they? You read a caption in book and take
it that the author has an accurate memory of the
day.
I suppose it's not really all that interesting as a
Beatle landmark, but for people who are really into
the Beatle/Liverpool thing, here is one place they are
probably are not aware of. What IS kinda
interesting, is that John and Paul would have passed
this spot every time they walked to and from
each others houses.

1 Call me pedantic, but none of the
"jump" shots photographed here were actually
used on the Twist & Shout EP cover as Dezo
intimates. If you look at the EP cover you can
see quite clearly that the band are wearing different
clothes. Perhaps Dezo meant that it was these shots
that inspired the cover